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From Oranges To Street Grates: Scents That Sell Gud Brand

Burt’s Bees combined a scratch-n-sniff card with a 90-second video on Facebook to promote güd, its line of natural shampoo, conditioner, hand cream, body wash and body mist, targeting Millennial women age 18-29.

Print ads, running in this month’s issues of Allure and Lucky, include a 2-sided, 5”x 7” scratch-n-sniff card with six scents, a $1 off coupon and a QR code leading users to the video. The video can also be viewed on güd’s Facebook page.

Created by Baldwin&, Raleigh, the video begins with a young woman getting ready for work. Viewers are prompted to smell a particular scent that matches a number shown in the video. Don’t assume that each scent is pretty, either -- unless you consider diesel and subway grates go-to fragrances.

The woman applies güd body lotion (scent 1) and heads to work. An otherwise grey morning turns vibrant and colorful once the woman comes in the picture. As she walks the city blocks, she passes a garbage truck emitting a lovely diesel scent. Once she passes the truck, however, the scent morphs into cotton candy. 

The next scent is that of a subway grate. Envision a 90-degree day and hot air blasting up, and it’s almost as gross as the smell of hot garbage.

Fortunately the woman walks over the grate and transforms that hot mess into a flowery scent. The final scent is strawberries, as the woman passes by a group of cigarette smokers.

The woman arrives at work and the voiceover closes with: “Wherever güd goes, güd happens.”

“güd has a delicious, complex scent profile. The whole thing is a very sensory experience,” said David Baldwin, Lead Guitar, and founder of Baldwin&. “The challenge was to bring this experience to life, which is a difficult thing to pull off using the usual ad media. So we came up with a way to attract and pull together the Facebook community by creating an unorthodox combination of media that actually gave you an idea of how great the product smells.”

The project took three and a half months to complete, including the animation.

In the first week of the video launch, güd’s Facebook page captured more than 200,000 new “likes.”

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